Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving, by the removal of material, such as clay, in stone, metal, ceramics, wood and other materials, but since modernism, there has been an almost complete freedom of materials and processes. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal, such as by carving, assembled by welding or modeling, or by molded or cast.
Young children are normally not taught sculpting in schools because it generally requires the manipulation of materials which either requires the forming of materials which requires one to get dirty and requires the use of tools to work clay, metal, wood, stone or the like by pounding, cutting, chipping or welding.
There is a need for a hands-on system for teaching sculpting which helps in the teaching of art in sculpting by children and for teaching the basics of abstract design.
There have been systems in the past for teaching or creating sculptures using simple kits or systems using materials that can be hand manipulated to form shapes without the use of special tools. Typical systems can be seen in the U.S. Patent Application Publications to Hart, No. 2009/0297875, for a sculpture kit using a coiled segment and couplers for connecting the ends together and in the Burks, Publication No. 2011/0171613, for a sculpture manipulative game using square, flat sheet of flexible, plastic material to create numerous sculptural forms. The U.S. Patent Publication to Read, No. US 2007/0042328, is for a dual coupling link for rubber band sculptures.
Other prior U.S. Patents which show sculpture constructing systems can be seen in the Wachspress U.S. Pat. No. 4,770,945 for a sculpture and method for constructing by defining a seed having a plurality of algebraic in which the sum of the orders of the surfaces is five or greater and has a plurality of edges at the intersection of the surfaces. In the U.S. Patent to Gross, U.S. Pat. No. 3,906,658, a magnetic toy has magnetic sculptural particles shaped together on a non-magnetic surface. The Bosler U.S. Pat. No. 3,992,724 is for a folded structure having utility as a structure for a fanciful novelty structure. The Dickhut U.S. Pat. No. 5,395,278 is for a manually manipulable flexible toy which has a semi-rigid elongated plastic tube forming a bellows which can have the ends joined.
The present invention is for a sculpture and art teaching kit especially for children. A container has one or more rolls of elongated springy or resilient material, such as coated paper, polymer paper, or the like, which may be held in a roll with a cord or ribbon in a container with a lid. The rolled resilient paper can be unrolled and twisted to form an abstract sculpture and then removably attached to the cover of the container with fasteners positioned to hold the twisted paper sculpture shape to the lid of the container so that the container becomes the base for the sculpture.